THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 4, 1994 TAG: 9411020160
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 206 lines
ITS PRESERVATION HAS been likened to the struggle for equal rights.
Its alma mater has been sung in the same breath with hymns of religious martyrdom.
Its price tag has risen to $36 million.
I.C. Norcom High School.
Just the words can raise the blood pressure of local politicians.
Once the only black high school in Portsmouth, supporters see the newest rendition as well worth the escalating costs.
They herald it as the coming of a high-tech institution that will bring great things to the city and its young people.
Others see it as an over-priced monument to the past, a shrine to segregation that will send the city spiraling into debt.
Many tiptoe around the subject altogether.
The Norcom mystique, as some call it, has been the downfall of many politicians, even the city's first black school superintendent.
It is a fight that has resurfaced many times, first 20-some years ago on the heels of school integration, when the city began making plans to turn the formerly all-black school into a vocational center.
Deloris Overton, now the city's registrar and a key player in the Norcom Alumni Association, was 18 then. She joined hundreds of students who boycotted classes in protest.
She also ran for City Council. She got 4,000 votes.
Raymond Turner, one of two black city councilmen at the time, lost re-election. He had come out against the Norcom movement.
Turner still doesn't understand. He fought for integration. He saw no reason to save a school that for too many years represented the only choice for black students.
``I was in school back in those days and it wasn't all that glorious to me,'' Turner said. ``So I was for developing true integration in the education system.''
Turner still doesn't think that has happened.
``Now I see people trying to go back and preserve or perpetuate the old segregated school system,'' he said. ``I consider all those schools mine. I paid for them. I was taxed for them.''
It is an issue that divides even his own family.
He also believes there are those in the black community who disagree with the Norcom faction in silence.
``You would never get them to publicly say it,'' he said. ``People are afraid of being ostracized.''
Turner estimates there are probably 300 or 400 people who believe that Norcom should be preserved. He isn't sure about the the strength of the Norcom Alumni Association, which speaks for the movement.
``It's an organization you can't really tell how many people are there,'' he said. ``They always have those who are active and keep things going.''
I've never really seen a high school alumni that could draw so much support,'' said Carlton Carrington, president of the United Civic League of Cavalier Manor, the largest African-American neighborhood in the city.
``They've got people on City Council, judges . . . all sections of the city,'' Carrington said. ``I personally think they have the potential power to control a lot of people.
``But they single shoot the issue and nothing else in the community matters.''
Carrington, who graduated from a Norfolk County school, has mixed emotions about Norcom.
``Maybe I would have been the same way if the school I had attended had survived during the days of pre-integration,'' he said.
``I was interested in perpetuating the name of I.C. Norcom,'' he said. ``But Churchland could have been named Norcom, or Manor. I thought that would be a better perpetuation of Norcom's ideals than to go overboard on a physical plant.''
But despite his opinion, Carrington says he admires the alumni association.
``A lot of us blacks can identify with them,'' he said.
He even understands the fact that the new school in Churchland fanned the fires to the point that saving Norcom became rebuilding it to equal the splendor of the school across the river.
Carrington says Churchland is probably pretty integrated now. But he still understands the strong perception that persists for the black community.
``There was a time when you better not cross that Churchland bridge,'' he said. ``Many years ago during the segregated time you wouldn't be caught in those places when the sun went down.''
But living in the past is one of the things that frustrates opponents and even supporters of the new Norcom.
``We wanted to name Churchland Norcom,'' recalled Mayor Gloria Webb. ``But it was seen as a white school. It isn't a white school, nor is Churchland white.
``That's the interesting thing,'' she said. ``Everybody thinks that there's like some kind of fairyland across the bridge.''
Webb also expressed frustration over the most recent controversy - the furor over tearing down the stadium so the school can be placed in a better position.
The mayor said comments made at the City Council meeting last week ranged from ``It needs to be a black high school'' to ``We can't tear the stadium down because it's a significant way for people to see black heroes.''
There were threats of petitions and protest marches, she said.
``I mean for what?'' Webb said. ``This is on the stadium issue. It isn't a black stadium or a white stadium. It's a stadium that's in the way of development.
``But it's an issue out there festering,'' she said. ``I don't know what in the world it's going to take to get past this racial issue.
``I have supported Norcom High School all along because I want to get past that before I die.''
Carrington agrees that racial healing will not take place at this point without the new school. ``I don't mean you're going to have anarchy, but you're going to have a lot of hate and mistrust,'' he said.
Joseph Wright, a community activist from Cavalier Manor, agrees.
Wright doesn't think the city needs another high school, but like Turner, he knows his position is not popular with many of his friends and neighbors.
``I think three high schools are enough for a city this size, but it's gotten to be an issue dividing the city. So they've almost got to build it, I guess.
``What burns me up is when I pick up the paper and see people speaking for me, like they're speaking for the entire black community,'' he said. ``Especially David Sanford (alumni president). He doesn't live in the city anymore.
``A lot of people get behind these so-called causes and they really don't even know why they're getting behind them,'' Wright said. ``I just hope it doesn't hurt the city.
Sometimes, in all the political and racial overtones of the Norcom issue, the man himself seems sort of lost.
Israel Charles Norcom, a well-educated African-American, came to Portsmouth to teach in 1883 and became principal of the old Chestnut Street high school in 1909.
The school was named for him when he died in 1916 and that name has come to symbolize self-esteem and pride for the black community. For the generations that came along before integration, it also seems to stir nostalgia for a time when a common purpose and struggle was easier to define.
``At times he would be proud,'' said James Norcom, a retired educator and grandson of I.C. Norcom. ``But at times he would be quite decimated,'' he said. ``He was an educator first and always, and he was for the education of the student and not so much to put on a show for the public.
``I think he would be proud with the memorial, as such,'' Norcom said. ``But at times it causes a lot of confusion.''
There are different reasons for the push to save and even improve the school, said James Norcom.
``Some are for immortalizing what he did. Others are for building a monument,'' he said. ``Others are just maintaining history and so much of each of those (reasons) is on the positive side.''
There are some who believe that educational needs are taking a back seat to the push for a new Norcom.
``I think a number of Norcom proponents have already acknowledged as much,'' Councilman James Hawks said. ``It seems to me a number of times, I've heard the response that Norcom is more than just a school.
``I've also heard the comment you've built the white school, now you've got to build the black school,'' Hawks said.
``That's pre-1954 talk,'' he said. ``It's separate, but equal talk. Now we're hearing it from the black community - that they want a black high school.''
Hawks said he didn't like to speculate, but that two things seem to emerge in the Norcom movement.
``No. 1, the desire to maintain traditions of the past,'' he said. ```Also it seems to me, it's a test of present political power. I just wish we could get back to talking about educational needs.''
Bernard Griffin, a city councilman who once served as alumni association president, agrees in some ways that the issue is a test.
He fears that if Norcom supporters are not successful on this issue, that leaders who represent the African-American community will lose control to a more militant element of the city.
``It may become violent,'' he said. ``I have tried to echo those sentiments to my colleagues.''
While gains have been made by African-Americans in Portsmouth, Griffin said the ``controlling element'' is still the white community.
``Not only Norcom, but many issues, Portsmouth does not seem to be able to get a handle on - jobs, decent housing and public safety.''
So why tie up $35 million in a school when citywide enrollment is on the decline?
``I expect people to say that,'' Griffin said, ``and usually I expect it to come from anybody who is white who really doesn't understand the situation.
``Money has always been available for something that basically would have affected the white community,'' he said. ``We only get into long overnight debates when it's something that seems to be an idea that the black community would like to see happen.''
Griffin describes the Norcom idea as ``everything that the black community has stood for and has to offer.
``It's the one symbol that down through the years has maintained its effectiveness . . . something that the African-American community should be able to rally behind.
``We're holding onto a tradition.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo on cover by MARK MITCHELL
Dorothy Faulks proudly displays her graduation photo from I.C.
Norcom High School. The name Norcom symbolizes self-esteem and pride
for the black community.
Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Norcom, once the city's only black high school, was named for Israel
Charles Norcom, a well-educated African-American who came to
Portsmouth to teach in 1883.
File photos
In 1972, Norcom's United Black Students Association staged boycotts
and walkouts to keep the school from becoming an integrated,
technical/academic facility as proposed by the School Board in 1969.
Some Norcom alumni refer to the years before 1972 as the ``Old
Norcom'' and the years since as the ``New Norcom.'' In 1987,
protests erupted again, above and left, when School Board plans
surfaced to close Norcom that spring. Plans were to convert the
building into a center for technical, language and arts courses.
That proposal was abandoned.
KEYWORDS: DESEGREGATION RACE RELATIONS I.C. NORCOM HIGH SCHOOL
PORTSMOUTH SCHOOL BOARD by CNB